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This review first appeared in the February 2012 issue of hi-end hifi magazine fairaudio.de of Germany. You can also read this review of the Stereokonzept 3.0 in its original German version. We publish its English translation in a mutual syndication arrangement with the publishers. As is customary for our own reviews, the writer's signature at review's end shows an e-mail address should you have questions or wish to send feedback. All images contained in this review are the property of fairaudio or Stereokonzept - Ed.
Reviewer: Jörg Dames
Sources: Fonel Simplicité, laptop with foobar2000 und Jriver MC, Northstar USB dac32
Amplification: Integrated – Fonel Emotion, Abacus Ampino; preamp – Funk MTX Monitor V3b; power amp – Audionet AMP monos
Loudspeakers: Thiel CS 3.7, Sehring S 703SE
Cables: Low-level - Straight Wire Virtuoso, Vovox; high-level HMS Fortissimo, Reson LSC 350
Power delivery: Quantum-Powerchords, Hifi-Tuning Powercord Gold with IeGo termination, MF-Electronic power strip
USB cable: Kimber USB Ag
Rack: Lovan Classic II
Review component retail: €14.800/pr

Fatso. "What’s that? Freshly born, not even a meter tall and already 15 kilo euros heavy?"


Hey, I like being a Berliner. Even of the relocated sort. It’s not just for the geography. It’s for occasionally abusing the standing belief that our kind has a loose mouth. But here I think that even readers from elsewhere would share my observation with rather more peppery commentary once they inspected Stereokonzept’s 3.0 up close.


That company has been active just a few short years. The 94cm tall 3.0 is their first and only recently launched floorstanding loudspeaker. And let’s be blunt, it lightens the wallet of any desirous listener by a very considerable amount. But it’s substantial not just financially. Particularly given its compact profile, 54kg per is unusually weighty. Let’s find out what makes this tester from Lübeck on the Baltic Sea such a heavy.


For Stereokonzept, one learns that involvement with loudspeaker development goes back three decades. The turn into professional production is simply far more recent but will see further models. Perhaps reflected in the model designation, the 3.0 is said to have been under development for 3 years during which time its makers came up with a few interesting solutions. Let’s start with the impeccably finished enclosure.


Its walls are a sandwich of 12mm Corian® (a dense and reliable acrylic mineral compound from US supplier DuPont) and Birch ply. Stereokonzept finds Corian not merely cosmetically attractive. They also cite nearly thrice the raw material density over the ubiquitous MDF to go a way toward exploiting higher stiffness and with it suppression of box resonances. Shale in this context would be another "fabulous material" but due to its purely natural origin is immediately less consistent for regular production. In conjunction with 15mm Ply on the cheeks and 18mm elsewhere, the creators claim very effective energy attenuation for their box. Additional stability comes from a granite plate for the floor.



Scan-Speak’s ring radiator tweeter on top occupies its own discrete enclosure. That couples mechanically to the bass bin via hard foam, cork and two critically torqued bolts. This is further attention to box talk where the Lübeck team talks of a golden mean between hard coupling and decoupling. This speaker head is staggered backward to create physical time alignment. The more beam-shaped radiation pattern of the tweeter is said to render the physical edge acoustically inconsequential.